


you’re the chosen one (there’s no turning back)

by historymiss



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 14:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18099917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: Adora’s body is a haunted house; one she can’t escape from no matter how hard she tries.(A companion fic to ‘now i sleep in the middle of the bed’ exploring Adora’s side)





	you’re the chosen one (there’s no turning back)

Even when she dreams, Adora can’t escape who she’s become. She will never tell Bow or Glimmer this, but sometimes, when she sleeps... she hopes to remember Catra, and the barracks. Adora knows she’s not supposed to, that she should hate everything the Horde touches, but the Horde shaped her, too, and she misses the gray food, the industrial oil and smoke smell of the air, the rough blankets. She misses the warm weight of Catra against her legs, the humming drone of her contented purr when she sleeps. Adora would always hold still so that she could hear that sound a little longer. It was the closest to calm Catra ever got, and it was infinitely precious to her. As precious as the soft, downy fur under Catra’s jawline, the velvety peak of her ears. The way she’d smile at her, slow and sly and conspiring. 

Adora’s fingers still know what it’s like to twine with Catra’s, in the dark of their bunk. Her lips carry with them the memory of their stolen kisses. 

For a moment, she can conjure it. Catra is there, and the hard, flat look has gone from her eyes, and Adora holds out her hands-

The dream lasts only a few precious minutes before Adora feels She-Ra flood into her in a tide of power and light. 

The bed dissolves, Catra and the barracks disappearing, and she’s left alone in a blinding void with the woman she’s been forced to become. 

“Go away!” Adora looks around, wildly. A red cape flutters at the edge of her vision. “Leave me alone! Please!”

“I cannot.” Is that her? It sounds so sad, and strange. Distant, somehow. Like a memory. “We are She-Ra.”

“I didn’t want this!” Her voice is high and pleading, desperate even through the sleep that muffles everything. “I didn’t ask to be you!”

“Do you regret it?”

“Well... no.” Adora rubs at her forearm, at the skin that no longer seems to scar or bruise no matter what happens to her. There’s a long silence. 

“A little.”

Another, longer silence. Adora thinks of what she’d say, if she was good with words like Glimmer. How she’d only ever wanted to be Force Captain and lead her friends. The betrayal of learning the true nature of that desire. The guilt of sometimes wanting it still, anyway. How she replays her childhood every time she meets Catra now, and how she hates herself for finding a million different ways she could have saved her friend. 

How cruel it is, being blind all your life, to suddenly see in the harshest light imaginable.

“I‘m sorry.” Is that Adora, or She-Ra? It’s almost impossible to tell.

“Nothing will ever be the same.”

Adora sobs in a way she won’t let herself, awake. She will greet the morning with tears in her eyes and on her pillow, and not for the first time.

“I can allow you this, though.”

The barracks returns, the gentle rhythm of Catra’s purring. The sense of belonging, even if that belonging was bought with ignorance and fear.

Adora’s breath catches as she counts down the minutes.

The dream lasts.

She stays.


End file.
